Patterson: Detroit Needs Emergency Financial Manager

LIVONIA (WWJ) – While Detroit Mayor Dave Bing tries to stave off a city takeover by the state, one local leader says he thinks an emergency financial manager is necessary.

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson told WWJ’s Sandra McNeil he spoke with Mayor Bing as late as Monday. He says he thinks he’s doing a credible job, but Patterson says he still thinks the city needs an emergency financial manager, saying the mayor can’t solve this crisis alone.

“An emergency financial manager can do things that the mayor cannot do,” Patterson said. “Come in and really vitiate very expensive union contracts, as an example. There’s your pushback — the union officials and union employees don’t wanna see — a financial manager on site because he can do what the financial manager’s done in Pontiac: the police department’s gone, the fire department’s gone; the city clerk’s office is gone. I mean they have tremendous power.”

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Sandra McNeill started her career as a newspaper reporter in a small town in England called Wokingham. Her daily walk to the police station to find out what was happening that day invariably came up...